Homework

How long does it take everyone to either have their child do their homework or help them with their homework? My child gets very frustrated not understanding what to do. The child asks the teacher and the teacher tells the child you know how to do it go sit down. The child really does not understand. Homework can take anywhere from 1 1/2 - 4 hours a night. The child has CAPD and does not have ADHD. Does everyone else see homework being a problem for their children (i.e. understanding it and getting it done)? I am just curious how long it takes other children/families out there, especially ones that only have just CAPD. Any feedback would be great.

It would take my son hours to do his own homework, he's dyslexic and in the 7th grade. For years now, we do homework as a joint effort and most nights that means I do it and he copies, and then we go over the assignment. There is no way he could do it himself.This way we save time, stress and he learns something to. If I left it up to him to do alone, it would take hours and he would learn nothing.

I told the LA teacher we do NOT do spelling, no spelling for
my son.
If she didn't agree I would have called an IEP meeting and
we would have discussed it then.

You have to pick and choose your battles. Spelling was
our waterloo for YEARS and finally I just had it up to here!

NO SPELLING! :-)

You can ask for a one hour limit on homework,
he only get grades on what he gets done.

You can only do half and that's it. You can ask for extra
time.

Call a meeting, sit down and say - we are not going to live
like this anymore! And tell them how it impacts your family
life and your child. Nobody should have to live like this!!
Suggest that you would like them to pay
for off site counseling because of the stress your child and you
are under....

The more fuss you make the more action you get.
It is hard at first but I'll probably be sliding across
the IEP meeting floor in socks and playing my air guitar,
ala Tom Cruise, by the time my dyslexic son graduates
from high school. 'Are you ready for an IEP!!!!!!!!'

We have found that too long doing homework is counterproductive. My son is in 5th grade, and is _never_ expected to work for more than 80 minutes (40 mintues language arts and 40 minutes math, scinece and/or social studies) It is written into his IEP that homework will be modified either by the parents or the school staff to fit this times schedule. Last year, the homework expectation was 40 minutes max.

Interestingly, in the class he was in in the fall, he had a really hard time doing what was required of him in that time frame, even when the assignments were modified by 50%. After we switched him to a new class in January, he hasn't had one assignment modified, and only once have I had to send back an assignment that he couldn't finish, not because of time, but because he really didn't get it.

At the same time, his test scores have gone up. In the old class, he was failing about half of his tests. In his new class, he has only rarely gotten a test score below 90%.

At least for our kid, more homework DOESN'T mean more learning. It means more stress, which just interferes with learning.

Oh, I forgot, another thing we worked out is that my son gets "homework help" with a SPED teacher for half an hour after school 3 days a week. That has REALLY taken the pressure off, because she does the "hard stuff" with him, so that what comes home, he's usually able to do on his own. (that 30 minutes counts as part of his 80 minutes of homework time... it's not added on)

My 5th grade son has 2hrs of homework a night, that includes 25 spelling words a week, and some time on long term projects; it is a strain to do it all and still have time for soccer and Scouts. It is not modified and next year in middle school I expect he will have more. Yes it takes a long time; we are in a competitive suburban Massachusetts school district that gives homework in kindergarten!

My arguement to the school about spelling
was that it was counter productive for him to
memorize spelling words that he was not able
to read. DS is dyslexic, tested out at 4th grade
reading level in 6th grade, middle school.

That we spent so much time memorizing the
spelling words that we had no time to work
on his reading.

And since they were doing nothing, absolutely
nothing, to help him improve his reading skills,
I did it all at home, so I saw the
spelling memorization a total waste of time
and an incredible stress on him that I was able
to document over the years.

The school psychologist sat in the meeting and
said, 'you know we are doing nothing here for
this child, the parents are doing everything'.

This arrangement would really help my son. According to his regular teacher, he doesn't learn well in a whole group. She has to explain things to him either individually or in a small group. He has CAPD but a sound field system was tried without any improvement. So I am not sure where things are breaking down.

Anyway, we have to spend a lot of time reteaching material from school. I am really worried about fourth grade (he is in third).

I wondered how you were able to get homework help after school. We have an IEP meeting this week to discuss all his various continuing problems.

We are lucky to be in a good school system. We had called a number of meetings because my son was getting totally stressed out, in spite of the modifications to his homework. After school was becoming a non-productive H--l, because he was too stressed to get anything done. The school actually offered the after school "Homework Club" that is run by a SPED teacher.

It has been a Godsend in reducing the stress levels. In his new classroom, with the lower homework load, we probably could have struggled along without it, but We're leaving it in place. He's used to it, and he deserves a little easir stretch after the first half of the year. Besides, I think that going into middle school next year, he's likely to REALLY need it again.

What a good idea!! I have mentioned to the ESE director that his classroom teacher told me that he needs one on one or small group teaching. I also told her that we were having to reteach him much of the material and that if I was going to homeschool I was going to homeschool. She, at least at the moment, was very responsive to my concerns and said we needed to discuss them at an IEP meeting--which we are having this Thursday.